Quirky Zombieland an Undead Party
Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is a crash-course in mayhem, blood-letting, sarcasm and hilarity not necessarily in that particular order. Working from a weirdly psychotic screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the movie posits a world that has been overrun and devastated by the undead, a small band of infighting survivors driving cross-country trying to find some semblance of normalcy.
Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson in Columbia Pictures' Zombieland
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and former Oscar nominees Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin, and featuring cameos from Amber Heard, Mike White and the great Billy Murray, the whole thing is a strangely disaffected curio piece that gets by on the strength of its cast and its own surrealistic precociousness. It is a lurching, oddly paced movie that has trouble maintaining its own momentum, somehow overcoming its self-created obstacles to become a gore-drenched winner.
It reminded me, of all things, Adventureland (and not just because both pictures star the laidback Eisenberg). The tone of both is incredibly similar, their world view running absolutely parallel with this more recent epic substituting run amok zombies for coming of age twenty-something ennui. They are both stories of acceptance and of discovering your inner voice, the price of making a lasting human connection worth it even with out of control undead demons attempting to make the living their dinner.
I liked that Fleischer and company attempted to actually tell a human story amidst all their sensationalized bedlam. The fact that they try to craft realistic characters, allowing their actors moments of intense intimate subtlety, actually gives things weight, and even though I knew the whole thing was really nothing more than a blood-soaked lark I still found myself caring about the main foursome all the same.
My problems have more to do with pacing then they do anything else. The movie frequently slows to a crawl, pointlessly calling attention to itself for no other reason than the filmmakers think its cool. These dry spells don’t really add anything, and for a movie barely 90 minutes in the first place this extra padding did nothing for me other than to annoy.
Yet there are moments of sheer inventive genius that left me amazed. The first meeting between Eisenberg’s Columbus and Harrelson’s Tallahassee (each character refuses to give their name, using their city of origin instead) is a giddy tour de force, while a sequence inside a (mostly) abandoned grocery store is so good I almost wanted to applaud when it came to an end. Best of all is a mid-act jaunt inside a Hollywood mansion, the whole portion straddling fantasy and reality so superbly I laughed so hard I cried.
The amusement park climax gets a bit silly, and as well staged as it all is I’m getting a little tired of watching bands of frisky survivors constantly fend off zombies. As amusing and whimsical as much of this can be this overworked genre is coming perilously close to overstaying its welcome, and I’d be lying if there weren’t portions of the climax were I felt a little bit bored.
Still, I think Eisenberg (if he can show a little more range) has the potential to be a star, while Stone (21) and Breslin (13) have solid onscreen chops belying their relative years. As for Harrelson, the veteran character actor pretty much steals every scene he’s in, and other than Murray (who blows everyone out of the water with his trademark snark) the majority of the film’s best laughs are delivered by him.
At the end of the day I liked Zombieland. It is the kind of B-horror/comedy that has the potential to grow on me over time, the film’s quirky sense of style and its whacked-out lunacy something I definitely appreciated. Fleischer shows talent and his film is made with confidence, and while there isn’t all that much new going on the entertainment value is high enough not even legions of the walking dead could stop me from giving it a friendly recommendation.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
